On June 27, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a case brought by the federal government regarding whether Idaho’s abortion ban conflicts with a federal law called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. The law requires emergency rooms to provide stabilizing care for patients experiencing medical emergencies regardless of their ability to pay.

The Conversation asked law professors Naomi Cahn and Sonia Suter to explain how the case ended up in the Supreme Court’s hands and why battles between this federal law and state abortion laws will likely be in the news for the foreseeable future.

What is the key disagreement between Idaho and the federal government?

In Moyle v. United States, the Supreme Court faced the question of whether the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act overrides Idaho’s strict abortion ban.

Congress passed the law in 1986 to ensure patients’ access to emergency care even if they couldn’t afford to pay for it. It requires emergency rooms to stabilize patients if failing to do so would result in serious jeopardy to the patient’s health. The law does not require patients to be on the brink of death before treatment.

After the Dobbs decision overturned a federal right to an abortion in 2022, Idaho’s trigger law went into effect. The state law banned abortions except to save the life of a pregnant person and in some cases of rape and incest. The Biden administration challenged the law in federal court.

The federal government argued that the act requires providers to offer an abortion as stabilizing care in some obstetric emergencies, but that Idaho’s law would prohibit the abortion if only the patient’s health, but not life, was in jeopardy. Therefore, the government argued, the federal act overrides the Idaho law when the two are in conflict.

A federal district court sided with the Biden administration and ruled that Idaho’s ban doesn’t apply when the federal act would necessitate an abortion. So Idaho appealed to the 9th Circuit.

As a result of various procedural issues, the case was appealed to the Supreme Court before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reached a final ruling on the merits. The Supreme Court also blocked the district court’s ruling. As a result, doctors in Idaho could no longer perform abortions in emergency situations unless the patient’s life was threatened.

The practical impact of the Supreme Court’s action was stark. From January through April 2024, when the Idaho law was fully enforceable, St. Luke’s – the largest largest private employer in Idaho – medevaced six women to another state to obtain an abortion for health reasons.

In contrast, from late 2022 to the end of 2023, when the federal law governed, only one pregnant patient had to be airlifted out of state.

What did the justices say?

On June 27, the Supreme Court issued an unsigned (per curiam) opinion: At least five of the justices decided that the court was wrong to hear the case at this early stage. Accordingly, the case goes back to the 9th Circuit for further argument.

But there were four concurring and dissenting opinions, which provide insight into the court’s deliberations and may explain why it took so long for the court to issue its one-sentence opinion.

Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts thought the case should go back to the lower courts for further argument.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch thought the court should resolve the question of whether the federal law overrides Idaho’s law. Their idea of how it should be resolved differed, however. Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch concluded that the federal law does not preempt Idaho’s law. Jackson thought there was a clear conflict between the laws and that “under the Supremacy clause, Idaho’s law is preempted.”

Jackson went further in excoriating the Supreme Court for not resolving what she saw as a clear and dire issue: “Today’s decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho. It is delay. While this Court dawdles and the country waits, pregnant people experiencing medical conditions remain in a precarious position, as their doctors are kept in the dark about what the law requires.”

What does this decision mean for abortion in Idaho?

The decision means that the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act – at least for now – applies in Idaho. That is, in cases of medical emergencies, abortions must be an option if one is necessary to stabilize a pregnant patient and protect the patient’s health, even if their life is not at risk.

As Jackson noted, those scenarios could arise with many health conditions, like “preeclampsia, preterm premature rupture of the membranes, sepsis and placental abruption.”

It is worth emphasizing that in the rare cases when abortion is necessary to stabilize an obstetric emergency, the pregnancy is “often of a non-viable fetus”, Kagan wrote in her concurrence. Thus, if the federal law is followed, rather than wait until the patient is near death to perform the inevitable abortion, the necessary medical care can be provided earlier to prevent health complications.

While this decision now allows the federal law to block the Idaho abortion ban in cases of obstetric emergencies that can only be stabilized with an abortion, it still allows Idaho to prohibit all other abortions. Thus, Idaho’s ban of all other abortions except in limited cases of rape or incest still applies. Of course, it remains to be seen what the 9th Circuit will decide about the effect of the federal law on Idaho’s abortion ban.

Is this the last word on the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act?

Probably not.

The Supreme Court will likely have another opportunity to consider whether the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act overrides state abortion bans that conflict with it. The case is going back to the 9th Circuit to decide whether there is a conflict between Idaho and federal law. The losing party will probably appeal to the Supreme Court.

In another case pending before the Supreme Court, Texas has challenged the Biden administration’s assertion that the federal law preempts laws that would ban abortions in cases of obstetric emergencies. Both the lower federal court and the 5th Circuit concluded that the federal act did not override Texas’ abortion bans.

The Biden administration asked the Supreme Court to consider the Texas case, but the court has not yet decided whether to do so. If it does, then the questions related to the federal law will be back again in the next Supreme Court term, which begins in October.

By the time the case gets back to the Supreme Court, a different president may have taken office, and their administration may have a different view of what the act requires.

Does the ruling affect abortion in other states?

Because there are two conflicting federal court rulings in the 9th and 5th circuits on whether the federal law overrides state abortion bans, this Supreme Court ruling has no impact in other states.

In dismissing the case rather than addressing its merits, the Supreme Court has not taken a position as to whether the federal law preempts state laws when there is a conflict. This means that health care providers in the many states that have enacted near-total abortion bans still face a dilemma where, as public health professor Sara Rosenbaum put it, pregnant patients have “become radioactive to emergency departments.”

It is also noteworthy that this is the second time in a single month that the court has ducked an abortion-related issue. Earlier in June 2024, it dismissed a challenge to abortion pill access – leaving many unsettled questions about access to abortion in the United States.

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against an estimated US$6 billion Purdue Pharma bankruptcy plan on June 27, 2024, that would have shielded the Sackler family – which owned and controlled the company – from legal liability.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died from opioid-related overdoses since Purdue rolled out OxyContin in 1996. The company helped spur a public health crisis through its deceptive marketing and aggressive sales of OxyContin, a prescription opioid painkiller.

The company, but not the family, sought bankruptcy protection in 2019 in exchange for contributions to a global settlement deal. That settlement would have forever protected the Sacklers – as well as hundreds of affiliates and other Purdue Pharma insiders – from all opioid-related civil claims. Because the Sacklers have said they would reject any deal without legal immunity, this Supreme Court ruling makes the fate of this settlement unclear.

The Conversation asked Temple University law professor Jonathan Lipson to explain what the ruling in this case, Harrington v. Purdue Pharma, means for the company, the Sacklers, people harmed by OxyContin and the public.

What does this ruling mean?

In the near term, it means that the effort by Purdue and the Sacklers to limit their liability will go back to the bankruptcy court, where the deal will probably be renegotiated. In the long term, it means that powerful people cannot use their company’s bankruptcy to escape accountability.

This ruling will further delay the roughly $6 billion promised under Purdue’s plan. So far, companies involved in the manufacturing, distribution and sale of opioids have reached settlements that are contributing $50 billion to efforts to abate the opioid crisis.

The majority was careful to say that its opinion was “narrow” and should not upset similar prior deals. But, going forward, corporate insiders will no longer be able to use their companies’ bankruptcies to force creditors to give up claims. In many ways, this decision simply confirms the status quo: If you have liability for misconduct, you cannot latch onto a company’s bankruptcy to get out of it.

You either have to defend the claims in court or file for bankruptcy yourself.

What did the court object to?

The technical term for what this very wealthy family sought – and what the court’s majority rejected – is a “nonconsensual third-party release.”

“Release” is a bit of a misnomer, though, because that is really a contractual concept, and there is nothing contractual about what the Sacklers demanded. They wanted an injunction from a federal bankruptcy court that would forever bar anyone who might try to hold them accountable from suing them for their role at Purdue Pharma when the company committed two sets of confessed drug-marketing crimes.

Until now, only bankruptcy courts could provide such releases, and appellate courts have been split about the practice for many years.

On the one hand, many lawyers and scholars laud these releases because they can increase the amounts paid to creditors following bankruptcy. They promote settlements, which can reduce the amount and cost of litigation.

On the other hand, the U.S. Bankruptcy Code says nothing about these releases. Congress amended that code in 1994 to permit them for asbestos-related liability, but the majority in the Purdue case recognized that these releases aren’t approved for any other purpose.

The petitioner before the Supreme Court was U.S. Trustee William Harrington. Trustees are Justice Department officials who serve as regional watchdogs of the bankruptcy system. They have long argued that these releases go too far because they give too much discretion and power to bankruptcy judges.

How did the majority explain its rationale?

The court’s majority said the releases went too far because they were outside the text of the Bankruptcy Code. Most Supreme Court justices view themselves as “textualists,” meaning that if Congress has gone to the trouble of writing a statute, courts should apply it carefully and within the limits legislators defined.

Here, there was no doubt that Purdue could extinguish its own liability in bankruptcy. The problem was that “rather than seek to resolve claims that substantively belong to Purdue,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority, Purdue’s plan “seeks to extinguish claims against the Sacklers that belong to their victims” even though “precisely nothing” in the Bankruptcy Code permitted that.

Gorsuch was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

In an emotional dissent, Justice Brett Kavanaugh focused on the consequences he fears.

“With the current plan now gone and non-debtor releases categorically prohibited, the consequences will be severe,” he wrote in a dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Chief Justice John Roberts.

According to the dissent, people harmed by opioids might never get any compensation from a settlement with Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family.

Kavanaugh also suggested that claims against the Sacklers were no different than claims against Purdue. But it has long been a basic tenet of corporate law that owners and other kinds of shareholders are legally separate from the corporations they own.

What happens next?

The case will return to the bankruptcy court.

Purdue, the Sacklers and lawyers representing people harmed by OxyContin will probably renegotiate the plan and seek individualized consent to release the Sacklers. This is actually a very common approach – Purdue was pushing the boundaries by doing this without the consent of everyone who it harmed because not everyone who was filing these lawsuits agreed to the terms of the settlement.

In the end, the Sacklers may have to pay more than they previously promised. And they will run the risk that some people harmed by OxyContin won’t agree with the revised terms and instead will sue them outside of the bankruptcy system.

My guess is that the Sacklers will be willing to pay enough to reduce this risk, rather than blow up the plan entirely.

But they may throw in the towel and go back to a regular court to defend themselves. If they do, they would increase the chances that they will be prosecuted individually – which they clearly do not want.

The run-up to the Joe Biden-Donald Trump debate at the end of June 2024 has brought reminders about the first-ever televised presidential debate – and how Vice President Richard Nixon’s sweaty, haggard appearance that autumn night in 1960 opened a pathway to the White House for the tanned and telegenic Sen. John F. Kennedy.

That, at least, is conventional wisdom about the Kennedy-Nixon debate of Sept. 26, 1960: Image prevailed, rewarding Kennedy and punishing Nixon.

“Kennedy went on to narrowly win the election that most say he never would have had a shot at without that first debate,” Time magazine declared in 2016, in recounting the greatest missteps in political debates. “It seems Nixon’s fatal flub was in failing to recognize the power of the visual image.”

Or as Max Frankel, then the executive editor of The New York Times, wrote sardonically several months after Nixon’s death in 1994, “Nixon lost a TV debate, and the Presidency, to John F. Kennedy in 1960 because of a sweaty upper lip.”

Nixon did perspire under the hot studio lights, but few pundits and analysts at the time focused their commentaries on the vice president’s appearance. In a revealing example of the impermanence of in-the-moment judgments, many pundits and analysts thought both candidates appeared nervous and tentative. Some of them said Nixon, who was still recovering from the effects of an infected knee that had sent him to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in late August 1960, had the better of the confrontation.

The prevailing view at the time was that the debate settled nothing about the 1960 race for the presidency.

The debate as a draw

What the public is often told nowadays about that first-of-its-kind debate, which took place without an audience in a television studio in Chicago, does not quite square with reactions and perceptions that circulated at the time. As the debate’s aftermath made clear, first assessments can be fleeting and prone to dramatic revision.

I examined scores of newspaper articles, editorials and commentaries written in the debate’s immediate aftermath in researching a chapter for “Getting It Wrong,” my 2017 book about media-driven myths. There was, I found, no unanimity among newspaper columnists and editorial writers about Nixon’s appearance. Not all of them thought Nixon’s performance was dreadful or that Kennedy was necessarily all that appealing.

The Washington Post, for example, declared in an editorial two days after the debate: “Of the two performances Mr. Nixon’s was probably the smoother. He is an accomplished debater with a professional polish, and he managed to convey a slightly patronizing air of a master instructing a pupil.”

The debate moderator, Howard K. Smith of ABC News, later was quoted as saying he thought “Nixon was marginally better” than Kennedy.

Saul Pett, a prominent feature writer for The Associated Press, rated Nixon highly for projecting cordiality. “On general folksiness, both before and during the debate,” Pett wrote in an article published the day after, “my scorecard showed Nixon easily ahead, at least 8 to 1. … He smiled more often and more broadly, especially at the start and close of a remark. Kennedy only allowed himself the luxury of a quarter-smile now and then.”

Walter Lippmann, a leading newspaper commentator of the time, mentioned Nixon’s manner deep in his column the day after the debate, saying television cameras “were very hard on Mr. Nixon. … They made him look sick, which he is not, and they made him look older and more worn than he is.”

The effect, Lippmann wrote, “was a misrepresentation and we must make sure for the future that the cameras are in fact impartial.”

Doubting TV’s powerful effects

But another syndicated columnist, William S. White, questioned the powerful effects of television in politics, writing, “There is, after all, no miraculous way to ride the electronic waves to the presidency: no gold mine of easily extracted votes in the TV sky.” Television was not new in 1960. About 87% of American households had at least one TV set by then. Still evolving, however, was television’s role in American politics.

Of greater importance, at least to some analysts, were Nixon’s tactics during the debate. He, for example, seemed inclined to discuss matters as framed by Kennedy. In his opening statement, Kennedy expressed dissatisfaction with the country’s direction amid the uncertainties of the Cold War, saying, “This is a great country, but I think it could be a greater country; and this is a powerful country, but I think it could be a more powerful country.” He wrapped up his opening remarks by stating: “I think it’s time America started moving again.”

Nixon, who spoke after Kennedy, disputed that the country had been “standing still” during the Eisenhower years, but said, nonetheless: “I subscribe completely to the spirit that Senator Kennedy has expressed tonight, the spirit that the United States should move ahead.”

He concluded his opening remarks by saying, “I know Senator Kennedy feels as deeply about these problems [facing the country] as I do, but our disagreement is not about the goals for America but only about the means to reach those goals.”

Whether Nixon was trying to curb his combative tendencies or appeal to wavering Democrats, his remarks came across as oddly defensive and deferential.

“Nixon insisted so strongly that he shared all Senator Kennedy’s worthy goals that one expected a Nixonian endorsement of the Democratic platform at any moment,” columnist Joseph Alsop wrote, sarcastically, a few days after the debate.

So what altered the consensus about the first debate from being a draw to being Nixon’s on-air ruin? The answer no doubt rests in the search for a post-election explanation for Kennedy’s victory. He won the popular vote by 0.2 percentage points, or about 118,000 votes.

Historians of the 1960 campaign have pointed out that any of a number of variables could have tipped the outcome in such a close race. But political journalist Theodore H. White, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Making of the President, 1960,” argued that televising the first debate had been crucial.

“Until the cameras opened on the senator and the vice-president,” White wrote in his book, which was published in 1961, “Kennedy had been the boy under assault and attack by the vice-president as immature, young, inexperienced. Now, obviously, in flesh and behavior, he was the vice-president’s equal.”

Whether television was so revealing and conclusive is arguable. Less debatable, however, is the sense today that television had made a difference. As historian David Greenberg has written about that first televised debate, “the perception of television’s influence went on to transform American politics, shaping the behavior of leaders and candidates for decades.”

To that observation one could easily add: The perception of television’s influence likewise transformed conventional wisdom about the first-ever presidential debate.

Iran’s presidential election on June 28 may provide Tehran an opportunity to press reset on foreign policy issues after years of increasing hawkishness. Indeed, a key campaign issue has been the extent to which the candidates may – or may not – pivot to more engagement with the West.

While the supreme leader – the country’s highest religious and political authority – is the ultimate arbiter on dealing with international powers, Iran’s president has influence in a political system in which there are multiple centers of power.

The presidential vote, which was forced by the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a May 2024 helicopter crash, comes as Iran wrestles with major interrelated domestic, regional and global concerns. The country’s economy continues to suffer from international sanctions, the latest round of which were levied by the U.S. and U.K. in April 2024 after Iran conducted a direct strike on Israel.

Sanctions aren’t the West’s only way to apply pressure on Tehran: Cyber warfare, soft power and military might are also at countries’ disposal. Yet Iran’s activities – such as funding proxy militant groups, circumventing sanctions through China and Russia and advancing its domestic nuclear and missiles programs – have continued unabated in recent years.

As experts on U.S. foreign policy and Iran, we believe this raises an important question: Are the U.S. and its allies’ efforts at deterring Iran having any impact? And could a change in president provide an opportunity for the West to revamp its approach to Iran?

The limits of diplomacy

Since Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979, the U.S. and Iran have had no formal diplomatic ties. But that doesn’t mean that there are no diplomatic efforts. In fact, there are unofficial channels, such as the U.S. working through the Swiss government.

But U.S. diplomatic efforts with Iran are complicated at the best of times. They’re prone to disruption when the U.S. or Iran changes leadership and have been made only more difficult as Iran has grown closer with China and Russia.

The result has been an inconsistent diplomatic policy when it comes to how the U.S., and the West more generally, deal with Tehran.

This is a result, in part, of China gaining more influence in the Middle East and deepening its economic and strategic ties with Tehran. Similarly, Russia has strengthened military, political and economic links with Iran.

This has blunted the impact of Western diplomacy; Iran simply doesn’t feel compelled to come to an agreement with the U.S. and its allies on security interests.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear nonproliferation agreement signed in 2015 but abandoned by the Trump administration in 2018, is a prime example. Western leaders have sought to ensure that Iran does not acquire nuclear weapons, but they failed to get cooperation from Iran after President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement.

Despite this lack of progress, the U.S. and Iran still have lines of communication. After Israel’s attack on an Iranian Embassy compound in Syria, the U.S. clearly signaled to Tehran it had no involvement in the operation in an apparent attempt to avoid a retaliatory strike on U.S. interests in the region.

Nonetheless, Iran has little incentive to negotiate given the inconsistent, unpredictable policies of U.S. leadership.

Meanwhile, an impending U.S.-Saudi security pact could push Iran further from engagement with the West and closer to China and Russia’s orbit.

The U.S. and Europe ultimately have two goals: to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon and to reduce Iran-sponsored conflict in the Middle East.

But to date, both goals seem elusive, with Iran’s continued, unabated uranium enrichment and its attacks throughout the Middle East regularly taking place.

In the past, Iran gave diplomacy a chance out of fear that not showing some willingness could play into the hands of Western hawks who are pushing for military strikes against Iran.

A new reformist president in Iran could galvanize support for bringing diplomats to the negotiating table. However, it would likely need the supreme leader’s blessing.

In any event, the next president is looking more likely to be a hard-liner aligned with the supreme leader. And while they may feel domestic and international pressure to advocate for a more conciliatory tone, they may just as easily double down on current policy.

Peddling soft power

With confidence in reaching a diplomatic solution waning, the U.S. and its allies have turned to other means to pressure Iran.

Western intelligence agencies have carried out various information campaigns and cyber operations aimed at undermining confidence in Iran’s leaders and their regional strategies.

For example, in 2010 a joint U.S.-Israel cyber operation named Stuxnet compromised the Natanz nuclear material enrichment facility in Iran, degrading and disrupting normal centrifuge operations while signaling to operators they were operating normally.

Such operations continue to this day in response to Iran’s failing to address U.S. security concerns on nuclear proliferation and its anti-West activities in the region.

Tehran likewise engages in cyber warfare. In 2023, a U.S. report warned that Iran is likely to increase its use of aggressive cyber operations to achieve its policy goals. They include the use of state-sponsored proxies to deploy destructive malware and ransomware.

The Iranian presidential election comes amid a backdrop of domestic discontent – and offers the West an opportunity to flex another tactic to pressure Tehran: anti-regime propaganda.

In an effort to reduce support for the existing government and sow discontent among the Iranian public, independent radio and news networks backed by the U.S. and its European allies have targeted the Iranian public with anti-Iranian government messaging and amplified local protests.

Falling back on sanctions

Iran’s presidential candidates have broadly promised sanctions relief, potentially to counter messaging from the West. Such efforts suggest the candidates are sensitive to the sanctions’ disproportionate effects on everyday Iranians, particularly the middle class.

In recent years, the U.S. and Europe have increased sanctions on Iran for a variety of reasons. Iran’s repressive response to the 2022 protests following the death of a young woman, Mahsa Jina Amini, in police custody triggered various sanctions from the European Union. Most recently, in April, the U.S. and U.K. leveraged sanctions to dissuade Iran from escalating the conflict in the Middle East and selling drones to Russia.

Sanctions, such as those leveraged during the U.S.’s maximum pressure campaign during Trump’s presidency, have undeniably placed some pressure on Iran’s financial systems and trade. You can see their influence in the country’s high inflation rates and economic contraction.

But some analysts have argued that the campaign has hardened Iran and undermined diplomatic efforts.

Others hold that sanctions have had no effect, given how Russia and China have provided relief by giving Iran access to their markets.

While sanctions have demonstrably weakened Iran’s economy, their success in achieving the broader strategy of bringing Iran back to the negotiating table – particularly concerning its nuclear program and regional activities – is less clear.

Turning to military means?

Since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israel, the U.S. has shown a growing willingness to turn to military responses to counter Iranian-backed groups.

The most notable U.S. and U.K. airstrikes occurred in February, in retaliation for an earlier drone strike by an Iranian-backed group that killed three U.S. service members in Jordan.

To date, Western airstrikes have carried more of a symbolic effect aimed at dampening Iranian-backed provocations. But they demonstrate the U.S. and its allies’ military might.

In recent years, diplomacy, sanctions and soft power have failed to entice Iran’s leaders back to the table. Iran’s new president may well continue down the path of disengagement, but doing so risks inviting the West to sharpen its deterrence response.

Presidents are blamed for just about everything – especially during an election season. As the presidential debates of 2024 begin, the blame game is certain to be part of the spectacle. But presidents are not really responsible for as many things as voters, journalists or political opponents try to blame them for.

For the first time since 1912, a former president is a party’s presumptive nominee, running against the incumbent. Both men – Donald Trump and Joe Biden – have records from their time in the Oval Office of actions they have taken or not taken, and of problems they have been blamed for, whether they had any control over them or not.

In my own discipline of political science, there is a cottage industry of trying to predict presidential elections. These efforts look at a wide range of factors that, rightly or wrongly, are associated with, attributed to or blamed on the president, including the performance of the stock market, unemployment rates, consumer sentiment about the economy, and a variety of other measures related to economic output.

But these scholars, like the public at large, are trying to gauge how well a candidate will do based largely on factors presidents have little to no control over.

Making promises means taking the blame

The public demands action, and candidates promise it, but the presidency is an impossible office. It combines outsized expectations – which presidents themselves have embraced by campaigning as the voice of the whole country – with highly constrained political power in a system distinguished, currently, by gridlock.

At the debates, both Trump and Biden will likely speak of their records and make promises about what they would each do in their prospective second terms. But those goals will be largely out of reach without the support of Congress, which usually requires one party to hold both a majority in the House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. This is an unlikely outcome for either Biden or Trump.

The public pays little attention to the area where presidents have the most direct authority: foreign affairs.

Is it the economy?

In the current election campaign, the state of the national economy will undoubtedly be influential. But it is a complicated picture. Unemployment is low, the stock market is doing well, and inflation may be under control.

But higher prices are on voters’ minds. According to Gallup polling, the high cost of living is far and away Americans’ most important financial problem. A survey from April 2024 showed that 41% of the public volunteered that the high cost of living was their most important financial problem. That’s up 6 percentage points from when the same question was asked in 2023. In a distant second is the cost of housing.

In years past, the cost of living had hardly registered in the minds of Americans. From 2010 until 2021, the percentage of Americans identifying inflation as the most important financial problem was in the single digits. That percentage skyrocketed in 2022 and continued rising from there. This economic turmoil may be in the rearview mirror, but it has left much more expensive groceries on the shelves.

Recent evidence suggests that consumer confidence is on the rise. But that shift has not been beneficial to the incumbent president, because the public has not translated that to a more favorable view of Biden. It appears both that Americans are mildly optimistic about what is to come and that they remain jolted by the higher prices that took off in 2022.

Presidents can influence the economy, even without being able to control it. They can put into place a range of fiscal and regulatory policies, and can appoint Federal Reserve governors, who oversee monetary policy, including the widest-scale actions the government can take, including adjusting interest rates.

Additionally, presidents’ responses to crises, both domestic and abroad, may also shape how people feel about the economy.

While some studies have found that the economy performs better under Democratic presidents, the mechanisms are murky. One study concluded that the partisan differences in economic performance did not stem from different policy approaches but rather factors such as oil shocks, growth of defense spending and stronger economic growth abroad.

This imbalance between expectations of voters and limited powers of the presidency underscores the important role of presidential rhetoric and the media in linking presidents to the economy. Presidents often feel their economic accomplishments are undermined by the media. In December 2023, Biden implored reporters to “start reporting it the right way” when asked about the economic outlook.

What happens locally can color people’s views

The overall national picture isn’t the only view voters take. Many people form their views based on what they witness in their daily lives.

A decade ago, a colleague and I found that gas prices, home foreclosure rates and local unemployment levels in a voter’s community were influential in shaping their perceptions of the national economy, which in turn affects voting for president.

In other research, I’ve shown that factors like local unemployment, federal spending in one’s community and federal responsiveness in the aftermath of a natural disaster drive support for incumbent presidents among affected communities.

This research helps explain why Americans may not broadly agree about how well the nation is doing.

Some expectations are clearly unfounded

Voters – and experts – don’t always agree on the connection between government policies and actions and specific real-world outcomes. Did Trump’s immigration policies make the nation better off? Did Biden’s? These questions are not easily answered. Citizens rely on many sources, but especially the media, to figure out the connections and the results.

Voters also change their views of presidents for events well beyond a president’s control – such as when a local college football or basketball team wins a game right before an election, or even the occurrence of a natural disaster.

One study even found evidence that voters blamed President Woodrow Wilson for shark attacks off the coast of New Jersey in 1916.

Other research indicates that voters ignore long-term trends and instead base their votes primarily on events immediately preceding an election. For instance, the nation may see substantial economic gains over a president’s four-year term, but if growth slows or reverses before the election, the president may not reap the electoral benefits.

And partisan polarization means some voters may set aside their own knowledge and experience and blame the president, or a candidate, for almost anything.

Random events can showcase leadership or lack thereof

Election Day falls during hurricane season, and political news can be affected by a big storm.

In 2012, Superstorm Sandy hit the East Coast in late October as the presidential campaigns were in their final sprint. The storm gave incumbent President Barack Obama the chance to burnish his credential in ways both big – by coordinating the federal response – and small – by comforting the affected communities and meeting with Republican and Democratic leaders. Some research shows that Obama received votes based on his response to Sandy.

Presidents have no power to control the weather or to cause a natural disaster to strike a particular location. However, they do have control over the political response to the event. As my research shows, demonstrating leadership and even, on occasion, engaging in bipartisan cooperation can reveal information about the quality of an elected official and potentially influence votes.

It just goes to show that the election could be influenced more by a random act of Mother Nature in the fall than the debates in June.

There’s a widespread view that populism is on the rise, from the United States and Turkey to India and Hungary.

What is fueling this movement?

Populism is a political ideology that positions “the people” as a morally just, good group in society, in contrast with other people who are elitist and out of touch with society. Politicians such as former President Donald Trump have used this general approach to help propel their rise to power – and maintain their popularity among their supporters.

Trump, for example, described his political campaign in June 2024 as an “epic struggle to liberate our nations from all of the sinister forces who want to destroy them.” These “sinister forces” typically include everything from the media and international organizations to mainstream science and immigrants.

And Viktor Orbán, the populist prime minister of Hungary since 2010, often blames international groups such as foreign nonprofits for interfering in Hungarian politics and acting against the country’s interests.

The European Parliament determined in 2022 that Hungary could no longer be considered a democracy.

In its most radical, authoritarian form, populism poses a threat to democracy. It polarizes societies and erodes trust in experts.

But populist leaders still hold appeal, as they promise to return power to the people.

Yet they often deliver something very different from what they promise. They tend to worsen problems such as gender and ethnic inequality, without addressing the gap between the rich and the poor.

I have dedicated much of my career to analyzing populist movements, both as a politician serving in the Hungarian Parliament in opposition to Orbán’s regime and now as a scholar.

This unique experience has taught me one thing: Protecting democracy from populism requires first understanding its root causes.

What’s behind populism

Many journalists and political scientists view populism as a “cultural backlash” of conservative white men who fear the loss of their privilege in a diversifying world.

Immigration, race and religion are three issues that are often central to many populists’ politics. There are also economic factors such as a poor economy, international trade, industrial robots and artificial intelligence that some experts think also contribute to the rise of populism.

This is because the growth of artificial intelligence, for example, has led to the reduction of stable jobs in sectors such as manufacturing, which once gave working-class people a pathway to social mobility.

Many pundits and scholars still question whether the economy plays a significant role in populism. This argument takes various forms, but it typically boils down to statements like this one, made by a prominent political scientist about the 2016 U.S. presidential election: “Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote.”

In other words, the 2016 presidential vote was influenced by white voters’ fears about losing their dominant status in society rather than because of their financial struggles – at least according to this argument.

It’s the economy

My recent research shows a different source of anxiety behind growing support for populism: people’s concerns about economic insecurity are a crucial factor driving populism in Europe, North America and Latin America.

For example, Americans who lost their jobs in the manufacturing industry in the 2010s were especially likely to abandon the Democratic Party and vote for Trumpin 2016.

There is evidence that people’s anti-immigration attitudes are also fueled by their anxiety about their own jobs.

Research also shows that Europeans who lost their jobs or whose earnings were reduced because of competition with low-wage immigrant workers, for example, were more likely to feel threatened by globalization. They were also especially likely to embrace nationalism and vote for populist right-wing candidates throughout Western Europe.

Populist voters in the US

Still, research shows that not all populist voters can be lumped under the same umbrella. Populist voters are a diverse group with various motivations and concerns.

For example, artificial intelligence threatens jobs more in the U.S. and in Western Europe than in Eastern Europe, making Americans and Western Europeans more concerned about this issue than Eastern Europeans.

Race is another factor. Some white voters facing financial hardship may feel as if immigrants and people of color are responsible for taking the available jobs – and are to blame for their economic woes.

Populism is not just about conservative white men, however, despite the popular support Trump holds among many in this group. For example, Democratic politicians in the U.S. have increasingly struggled to win the support of working-class voters without a college degree, including a growing number of Black voters.

Black voters still generally vote for Democrats. But the Democratic Party has seen about a 28 percentage point decrease in Black voters between 2020 and 2024. Most of them switched to become Republicans.

This voter realignment has been occurring since 2008. When Trump was elected in 2016, he not only increased his party’s support among the white working class by four percentage points from GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s 2012 defeat, he also increased support among Black working-class voters by the same amount. This shift suggests that the Democrats have a working-class problem and not a white working-class problem. Economic factors, rather than just racial identity, are a major factor driving voters away from the Democratic Party.

Not all populist voters are extremists

Many media outlets tend to focus on core populist voters, who are masters of causing outrage with what one populism scholar calls “bad manners.” In this context, that means using inflammatory language or making politically incorrect statements, among other tactics, to draw attention to their cause.

The most successful populist political movements in places such as Italy and Poland, however, have grown by appealing to voters concerned with bread-and-butter issues. They combine the core group of populist voters, who are motivated by culture and racism, and an outer group of voters who are not primarily motivated by these issues.

Finally, voters’ support for populist leaders also depends on how nonpopulist, mainstream politicians appeal to them. Inclusive socioeconomic policies, such as expanding unemployment insurance, for example, can help stave off a populist surge.

The way ahead

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to the challenge of populism. For example, job guarantee programs help provide stable work, reducing the economic insecurity that often fuels populist sentiment.

In an economy characterized by gig work and people frequently moving from one job to another, portable benefits that workers carry from job to job – giving them continuous access to health care, retirement savings and other benefits – may help alleviate the anxieties that drive people to populism.

Boosting affordable housing and controlling rents can also promote more stable living conditions.

I think countering right-wing populism demands a concerted effort to tackle the economic insecurity that fuels this global phenomenon. The path forward may be challenging, but the alternative, a world where democracy is eroded and societies are polarized, is even more frightening.